A philosopher operates with deductions. A sophist operates with paradoxes. A “public intellectual” operates with buzzwords.
Failure to find the truth is perhaps an intellectual defeat, but failure to look for the truth is an intellectual surrender.
Believing that there is a conflict between rationality and spirituality is like believing that there is a conflict between knowledge and inspiration.
The ultimate foundation of spirituality is the recognition that there can’t be such a thing as a purposeful life in a purposeless universe.
Entrepreneurship is the use of self-interest in the service of others. Politics is the use of others in the service of self-interest.
The surest way to damage society is to call for a “great man” to lead it. The surest way to improve society is to become a great man to lead oneself and convince others to do likewise.
If you want peace, prepare for ideological war with those who want others to prepare for physical war.
If anarchy is chaos, and chaos is war, why wasn’t a single war started by anarchists?
The world will know peace when the entrepreneur fully masters the art of starving the politician.
The greatest obstacle to liberty is not the existence of evil rulers, but the belief in the existence of good rulers.
Individualism turns a band into a society. Collectivism turns society into a mob.
Individual liberty may be unable to solve every social problem, but collective violence is unable to solve any social problem.
Society is a voluntary scheme of mutual benefit. The state is a compulsory scheme of mutual exploitation.
Unorganized morality is called sociability. Organized morality is called civilization. Unorganized immorality is called barbarity. Organized immorality is called statism.
Economics without ethics is a caricature. Ethics without economics is a fairy tale.
Anarcho-capitalism: the realization that the only way to effectively govern the market is to have an effective market in governance.
Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts.
It takes a common thug to commit injustice, but it takes an exceptional thug to call it “social justice”.
To create a free society is not to accomplish the impossible task of convincing all people to abandon aggression, but to accomplish the essential task of convincing enough people to abandon the belief that aggression is ever legitimate.
To eliminate statism is not to physically subdue the rulers, but to mentally liberate the ruled.
The goal of libertarianism is not to permit people to be free, but to make them realize that they don’t need anyone’s permission to be free.
A libertarian is someone who graduated from thinking that there are problems with the state to realizing that the state is the problem.
To claim that one can be happy without being free is to prove that one has no idea what happiness means.
A slave believes that the law should define the scope of liberty. A free person believes that liberty should define the scope of the law.
The only common good is the common liberty to pursue individual goods.
Politics is an endless, borderless war against individual liberty.
Patience is the ability to enjoy the calm of boredom.
An anarchist is someone who rejects the curious notion that crimes become virtues as they grow in size.
It takes abstract thinking to see how greed can lead to prosperity, but it takes wishful thinking to claim that violence can lead to charity.
For the greater good”:the phrase that always precedesthe greatest evil.
The best way to turn the earth into hell is to turn the state into a god.
A fool believes that the society of the future will transcend the laws of economics. A person of reason hopes that it will finally learn to respect them.
Bad economics teaches that computers can design markets. Good economics teaches that markets can design computers.
Abolitionism was a movement to end private slavery. Libertarianism is a movement to end private and public slavery.
The history of modern philosophy is the history of losing and regaining the awareness of the fact that there is no third way between the Absolute and the absurd.
Voter: someone smart enough to choose how to be fooled.